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Midnight Crawling Saved Me Money!

A friend of mine is getting married in two weeks and I’m her maid of honour. Yes, Yaaay me! Ive known for a while that I will have to make the trip down as the wedding ceremony is taking place in a different city.

Three nights ago, my cousin asked about the trip and if I had bought my ticket. At that instance, I had a eureka moment and began searching for ticket prices. Ordinarily, this shouldn’t be a problem but I decided to take up the responsibility of paying for my flight ticket. I know this isn’t news so I will explain a little. I am from a country where your parents largely take up all your financial burdens till you get a well paying job or in some cases, till you’re married. Financial independence isn’t really a big deal until you’re about 21 or even older in most cases. But with every general rule, there are exceptions so there are those who set out early to gain their financial independence. While there are those whose parents cannot afford to fund them till whenever they can find their feet.

Anyway, back to me. I recently finished law school and I’m currently unemployed. In applying to jobs attending interviews and other events that came up over the past two months, my parents have paid for every single trip I’ve made. Mind you, all these trips have been by air which is relatively expensive interstate. To save them the stress and give myself a sense of responsibility, I decided to pay for this ticket myself. She’s my friend right, not theirs.

I checked the airfares for the date that I wanted and I’m like ”WHAT????!!!!”. It was outrageous and I needed an alternative. This particular airline seemed to have exactly what I wanted: the right day, the right time. I couldnt bring myself to pay that much so i started considering the day before since it was cheaper. I even considered travelling by air to a different city and then going by road to the city of her wedding to bring down the costs. This new idea didnt sit well with me so I decided to wait.

For some reason, the next night, this same cousin of mine asked me if I had bought the ticket. At this point, I had completely forgotten about the fact that I was trying to buy a ticket (forgive my inconsistency). I checked again much later at night, probably towards midnight and I discovered that the fare for the ticket I wanted had gone down significantly. I was elated! Who doesnt love a good discount? You would think that I’d buy it right away right? Nope! I didnt. I decided to wait for another 24hours. I believed I would be in luck and it would go down some more. Well guess what, at about 23:40pm the following night, the price had dropped by 21.875% from its initial price. I booked on hold for another 24hours. This time, the prices had started increasing once more. I quickly paid for what I had booked and got myself a great deal. I’ve definitely learnt a trick with this.

Here are a few tips I’d leave you with

Plan ahead: I know you’ve heard it a million times but you’ve probably not taken it up. Plan ahead and save a little money.

Study the pattern: Apparently, now I know this particular airlines pattern of pricing. Can you tell that I’d be using them alot more? Yes, so for whatever you want to purchase, you can take a day or two to study the pricing pattern. Believe it or not, you can get the best deal.

Take the decision to be Financially Responsible: Making this decision is a fast way to financial independence. If you know that you are going to be paying for everything you want and need, you’d obviously be searching for a source of income and spending less or you’d find yourself in that low place that never feels good, you’d be broke!

Finally, get a cousin like mine! Hahaha!!!

I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. See you some other time…..